A gas turbine engine generally includes, in serial flow order, a fan section, a compressor section, a combustion section, a turbine section and an exhaust section. In operation, air enters an inlet of the compressor section where one or more axial or centrifugal compressors progressively compress the air until it reaches the combustion section. Fuel is mixed with the compressed air and burned within the combustion section to provide combustion gases. The combustion gases are routed from the combustion section through a hot gas path defined within the turbine section and then exhausted from the turbine section via the exhaust section.
In particular configurations, the turbine section includes, in serial flow order, a high pressure (HP) turbine and a low pressure (LP) turbine. The HP turbine and the LP turbine each include various rotatable turbine components such as a rotor shaft, rotor disks mounted or otherwise carried by the rotor shaft, turbine blades mounted to and radially extending from the periphery of the disks, and various stationary turbine components such as stator vanes or nozzles, turbine shrouds, and engine frames. The rotatable and stationary turbine components at least partially define the hot gas path through the turbine section. For example, the gas turbine buckets or blades generally have an airfoil shape designed to convert the thermal and kinetic energy of the flow path gases into mechanical rotation of the rotor. As the combustion gases flow through the hot gas path, thermal energy is transferred from the combustion gases to the rotatable and stationary turbine components. Such gas turbine engines are commonly employed on an aircraft.
In addition, the fan section generally includes a rotatable, axial-flow fan rotor assembly that is configured to be surrounded by an annular fan casing. Thus, the fan casing may enclose the fan rotor assembly and its corresponding fan rotor blades. Further, the compressor section includes a plurality of compressor stages, with each stage including both an annular array of compressor vanes fixed to an outer casing and an annular array of rotatable compressor blades. During operation, it is common for the fan and/or compressor casings to include abradable materials (e.g. rubber) to help control the gap or clearance between the static gas turbine parts and the rotating blades.
Over time, such abradable materials can locally spall or lose material due to erosion or the ingestion of materials into the gas turbine engine. Conventional methods for repairing the abradable materials have focused on a full strip and recoating of the abradable material, which can be both time-consuming and expensive.
In view of the aforementioned, an improved system and method for in-situ (i.e. on-wing) repairing of such abradable materials would be advantageous. More specifically, a system and method for repairing the abradable material of the fan and/or compressor casing using a local in-situ repair tool would be desired in the art.